Tadej Pogačar
P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. museum of contemporary art and new parasitism

This essay
aims to present an overview of the P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Museum of Contemporary
Art and to explain briefly the strategy of its artistic activity, which
we have called New Parasitism. By no means has writing it been an easy
task, since it can be a fruitless exercise to analyse something that is
in a state of continuous creative motion and constant transformation.
We will therefore focus in the first section on some conceptual bases
and artistic contexts, and in the second on a description of the actions
carried out and projects realised in recent years.

This year's
lecture series is entitled Theories of Display. This title should
be taken in its broadest sense, to encompass artistic strategies, attitudes
towards public exhibitions, and types of artistic production. Only the
interweaving of gestures, discourse and behaviour can create the complete
semantic network in which we are interested here (in contrast to the bipolarity
of substance/form that attempts to capture the meaning of the works themselves).
Just as a public presence within the art world is significant, so too
can absence from the public eye be both significant and communicative.
We are less interested in the "reality" of artistic practice
than in its fiction - that is, the construction of fictive works that
afford us an alternative view of reality and free us from our own blindness.
It has often been observed that those who "create fiction" are
the true realists.

How, therefore,
do we define the P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Museum of Contemporary Art? We can describe
it as a notional, parallel art institution, a mobile spiritual entity
which establishes specific interrelationships among a variety of subjects,
societies, institutions, social groups and symbolic networks.The P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E.
Museum of Contemporary Art does not have its own premises or staff, but
rather adopts territories, chooses different spaces and feeds on the juices
of established institutions. As a "parallel art institution"
it serves: a) as a critical model for analysing the art-world system and
the institutions within it, and b) as a framework for the introduction
of alternative forms of communication and the establishment of new artistic
connections. Its operations are based not on the production of objects
or the analysis of situations, but primarily on the creation of happenings
and the cultivation of relationships. The conceptual basis of the P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E.
Museum owes a debt to a variety of sources, one of the most important
being without doubt the example set by Annali - the French school of new
history. Our ethos can be condensed into three main tenets: transcending
the limits of one's own discipline, flexibility and methodological eclecticism,
and the practice of adopting and holding on.

The new French
historiography has had a far-reaching influence on philosophy and art,
leaving a decisive mark on situationism and the practices of those artists
who have analysed the mechanisms and nature of contemporary society.

We have called
the strategy of the P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Museum's artistic pursuits New Parasitism
- the adjective New pointing to the differences between parasitism as
an ecological phenomenon and parasitism as a specific artistic practice
(rather than solely a form of transcendence or institutionalised innovation).

Parasitism
as an Ecological Phenomenon

In ecological
terms, parasitism is a relationship between two or more species in which
one (the parasite) lives off the energy of the other (the host). Whilst
affording the parasite nourishment, enzymes, oxygen and so on, the host
at the same time triggers various defence mechanisms against it. This
creates a state of perpetual tension between the two. The parasite tries
to overcome this conflict by finding new ways in which to maintains its
connection with the host. It responds to mechanical and chemical reactions
in the host (peristalsis, skin cleansing, antibodies) by anchoring itself
to it (by hooks or suction) and then producing protective devices and
substances that diminish the host's defensive capabilities.The development
of aggressive/defensive mechanisms requires a great deal of energy on
the part of the parasite, but because it lacks energy of its own, it survives
by refining its defence mechanisms. The level of such refinement depends
principally on the evolutionary age of the particular union(1).
The natural environment of the parasite, particularly a species that is
parasitic throughout its life, is the body of its host: to a parasite,
a body is the outside environment. This inversion of "external"
and "internal" is something with which the practice of New Parasitism,
too, concerns itself.Parasitism in nature only rarely occurs in an entirely
pure form. Transitional forms, including symbiosis and commensalism, depending
on the ecological conditions, are more common. As a phenomenon of the
ecosystem, parasitism is extremely positive in that it is a way of regulating
populations. Of the 40,000 animal species to be found in the geographic
territory of Central Europe, as many as 10,000 are parasites. This demonstrates
the extremely common and widespread nature of the phenomenon of parasitism.
New Parasitism differs from parasitism in nature in terms of its procedures.
However, some ecological models remain relevant to activities in social
and societal environments.

The Museum
and Parallel Institutions in the System

For the past
two centuries, the museum or gallery has been the art system's main institutional
environment. It serves both as a framework for art and as a border between
the codified, accepted and organised "interior" and the chaotic
"exterior". In the past century it has even constituted a form
of cross-section of dominating value systems and aesthetic objects characterising
particular cultural territories. The museum continuously legitimises and
at the same time reinforces the myth of objective historical representation,
in which artwork assumes the role of document; this myth is based on a
linear comprehension of time (and history), gradualism (the idea of gradual,
logical progression) and a clear future direction.The basic motif of avant-gardes
of the past (the Russian Avant-garde, Futurism, Dadaism) has been a sharp
revolt against the traditionalism of the museum, and against its status
as the institutional showcase of bourgeois class culture. As Boris Groys
points out, it is this radical protest that has, in the past, defined
the avant-garde. The historical avant-garde cultivated two metaphors:
that of art as life (social/political engagement) and that of the museum
as death (the burial ground of culture). But these "negativist"
programmes (Habermas) did not have the power of transformation and thus
did not succeed in changing the system.In due course, museums accepted
and exhibited the avant-garde, thereby neutralising and paralysing their
"external opposition". This dark scenario nevertheless has its
bright side: the historical avant-garde has "survived" to the
present time, if only because the museum system (paradoxically) took it
under its wing. Without the museum system it would not have been "preserved"
as we know it today: as an external living art, as the living dead ...
Dracula(2).

From the
first decades of this century onwards, we can trace several strategies
which undermine, problematise, deconstruct or call into question the structure,
ideology, mechanics and spatial presentation of art. These strategies
differ from the direct assault advocated by the historical avant-garde
in that they create, as it were, a "point of intersection" with
the artistic system enshrined by museums and galleries. Usually they involve
reconfiguration or rearticulation of that which is contested, in a critical
or parodying manner. In short, they represent a transition from out-and-out
opposition to "critical action".

The so-called
parallel institutions within the art system that have emerged over recent
decades have their antecedents in Duchamp's Société Anonyme, Warhol's
Factory, Broodthaers's Museum of Modern Art or Beuys's open
international university. In response to the question of whether culture
would continue to bear any real significance for society, Broodthaers
replied that it could only survive by "embodying itself", with
its own reference sources and theory with which to counter the images
and texts circulating in the press and other mass media - the ones that
currently determine the rules and patterns of our behaviour and ideology.
Parallel, fictive institutions represent a response to this situation.
But characteristic of many of them is a fascination with planning, organisation,
production and distribution - elements normally associated with the economic
sphere. In the late capitalist period, economics have become the main,
dominant social value and the overriding discourse. The economy has taken
over the position traditionally held by religion. Parallel to this, it
has brought about a diversion from the concept of author/artist; by its
very essence it undermines and breaks down the logic of the art system
that rests on the notion of originality and the autonomy of the subject.

The new generation
of artists have radicalised this problem still further. They have created
a kind of perverse dialectic between anonymity and stardom, presence and
absence, a logic that can be related to the logo of an organisation. We
can now speak of the "aesthetic" of organisations and of institutional
"values", since the logo represents both the physical institution
and the ethos it employs in holding dominion over a specific territory.
Reality is administered and distributed in accordance with these so-called
institutional criteria. Within this system, artists are employing elements
of mimicry and camouflage, and with them creating new, and mixing old,
groups of symbols. Since the late 1980s their output has become a criticism
of, and at the same time a fusion with, the system(3).So
an art institution can now be a bank (Banca di Oklahoma Srl), an
airline company (Ingold Airlines), an agency exploiting new possibilities
in the art of the funeral (ENIO), a chain of companies selling
cultural products (Mc Jesus Chain), or a fish company (Fish-handel
Servaas & Son) which packages, preserves and distributes "fish
air".

No
Event Performances

No Event
Performances - performances independent of any event - was the name we
gave to our early activities, some of which were carried out before the
formal establishment of the P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Museum of Contemporary Art.
The public were not informed of these, nor were they present at them.
The performances were carried out anonymously, in both public and private
spaces, in the city and in the countryside. Most of them have been only
modestly documented.

One example
is an early performance called New Spring Collection (1979), an
ironic fashion show held at a suburban rubbish tip near Ljubljana. The
rubbish and scrap formed a dramatic backdrop to the graceful stride and
co-ordinated choreography of the fashion show. The performance was carried
out anonymously and is to be repeated every twenty years.

Visit
I (1981) and Visit II (1993) were anonymous performances carried
out within a museum. The performances aimed to deepen the empathetic relationship
with the artefacts exhibited in the museum. To this end they used elements
of enhanced communication, dialogue, accustomisation, experiences. Visit
II, a performance at the Natural Science Museum in Ljubljana, has
been documented in three photographs: Meditating with a Mammoth, Sleeping
with a Deer and Feeding a Bear. The
performances took place without an audience, intimately, and in complete
silence.The Travelling Globes (1990) performance exposed the semantic
transformation experienced by an object when changing location and context.
Documented by photographic snapshots, two demonstration globes "travelled"
a planned route, posing as public sculptures, everyday objects, aesthetic
objects and school models, finally ending up as a works of art in a public
collection.The Panorama action was carried out in cooperation with a group
of children, who painted long rolls of paper that were later wrapped around
treetops, creating an interesting interplay between different models of
nature.

Laboratorium
I (1993) involved a performance and installation in undisclosed private
premises. They were not directly on view to the public, but information
on the performance and installation was relayed later in the form of an
explanatory text and selected documents. This project exposed the problems
of information, its manipulation and documentation. Laboratorium I tells
the following story: an experiment is performed in secrecy. A mistake
occurs whilst it is being carried out (mistaken suppositions, the human
factor, mix-ups) and the experiment ends unsuccessfully, with catastrophic
consequences (the total destruction of the laboratory's equipment and
interior).Because no information on the preparations for the experiment
or on its execution had been passed on to the public, it had no existence
whatsoever in the "public domain". This situation made it possible
for us to reconfigure the past freely in order to satisfy current interests,
an approach widely used in political and economic spheres. With the installation
Laboratorium II (1994), the project underwent a symbolictransformation
in the form of its reconstruction in a museum / gallery. What we were
interested in here was how a certain "event" becomes transformed
through reconstruction, its symbolic gains and losses. We were investigating
the clash of two institutions which both represent behaviour and knowledge,
the laboratory and the museum - the first a space of direct experience,
the second a space of accepted norms.

New Endoparasitism

Under the
classification of New Endoparasitism we undertake projects that are characterised
by the "building of nests" in various institutions, such as
museums and schools. Constructed by rearranging internal elements found
at the location itself (information systems, architectural elements, historical
and social contexts, artefacts, texts, etc.), these create new readings
and communication.

These projects
are: Art History - Through the Body (1994), West-Side-Story (1994),
Evolutionary - Notes on Human Behaviour and Progress (1996), School's
Out (1997) and Exhibition of Exhibitions (1998).

The Art
History - Through the Body project was created at the premises of
the Museum of Recent History in Ljubljana. At this time, the museum was
just concluding comprehensive, several-year-long preparations for a new
permanent display that was to present a complex evaluation and interpretation
of the national history of the past century. The P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E.
Museum's project was thus realised at a time when the Museum of Recent
History found itself in an unusual (crisis) situation; a period in which
recent history had not yet been constructed, and the older history was
losing validity. The display originated from the location of the institution
itself and its historical context and sociological position, but what
was most significant was the process of selecting the artefacts and museum
objects and the strategy employed in displaying them.In the pieces we
selected we traced the concept of the body, in two directions: the body
as an index of the disappearance of the individual into the symbolic web
of ideology, the masses, the collective; and the body as a physical entity
devoid of symbolisation (e.g. wound, torture, extreme emotional states).

The project
was created through daily visits to the storage facilities, offices and
exhibition sites, yet one of its key components was the physical presence
of the director of the P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Museum during the preparations
and for the duration of the display. The display took up five rooms of
the museum. In each a complete story, narrated in a non-linear fashion,
was told as part of an open series. The last room was occupied by the
"Administration of the P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Museum of Contemporary
Art". The administrative offices of an institution, usually carefully
hidden from the public eye, could be experienced here as a public room
of communication (guidance through the exhibition) and an essential component
of the complex display.

A similar
approach marked the project entitled Evolutionary - Notes on Human
Behaviour and Progress, realised in the Boijmans van Beuningen
and Naturmuseum in Rotterdam, within the framework of the new European
biennial Manifesta I. In the Boijmans van Beuningen and Naturmuseum
we selected as our territory the corridor that links the building's facilities,
which is not normally intended for display purposes. This location was
chosen as one which has the function of connecting things in the museum
and is arbitrary in nature. We covered the walls of the hallway with green
panels, thus both visually and physically separating it from the other
rooms. The project was directed towards an investigation of what is actually
represented by "Europeanism", that is, what it constitutes.
From the museum depot we selected a group of photographs of contemporary
European and American artists and mixed them with works by the P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E.
Museum (mostly cover images from science and fashion magazines). All
these items were framed, in the workshops of the museum, in such a way
that the passing visitor could not separate the "virus" pieces
from the "real thing". We hung the photographic works in the
green corridor and displayed them in distinct thematic groups (city, women,
scientists, animals). To this visual material we added text, comprising
a series of carefully selected quotations made in Europe over the past
two centuries - all allied to theories and concepts of evolution developed
within the anthropological and natural sciences (e.g. craniometry, creationism,
neo-Darwinism). The choice of quotations was selective; we were interested
above all in those which revealed, in the most direct and crude manner,
stereotypes, complexes, cultural prejudices, morals, passions - everything
that normally lies concealed and stifled by objective science. The criterion
for selection was therefore not scientific justification, intellectual
persuasion and the like, but the desire for domination and power that
is brought to the forefront in these hidden thoughts.

The objective
of the second part of the project was to present the main curators of
Manifesta I as the most important links in the systemic chain. They were
each sent a written invitation to sign the "Rotterdam Declaration",
under the terms of which they would participate in a hypothetical DNA
fingerprint study to be carried out by a professional biologist. This
would provide us with a genetic record of each of the curators. A lack
of cooperation on the part of the curators meant that the study was never
realised. The School's Out project was prepared at a Ljubljana high school
with the help of pupils and a well-known disc jockey. Discreet interventions
in the school's classrooms did not interrupt the regular rhythm of lessons
and visitors could only view the project in the recess periods during
school breaks. The displays and works crossed and juxtaposed elements
of education, domination and discipline with visual elements and systems
of knowledge. We used teaching tools and school aids found at the location
itself. The project began with a disc jockey party and concluded with
a discussion about the project.

Fake and
Fiction

In a similar
way to other art institutions, every few years or so we prepare a display
of newly acquired works in our collection. The Recent Acquisitions project
(1996) in the Škuc Gallery played around with the overall apparatus of
the museum and exhibition system: from publications, broadcasts and announcements
in the media, through the ritual of the official opening, to the presentation
and interpretation of the works. Most of the information that was distributed
about the exhibition was unreal and fictitious.

The exhibition
was to present pieces by five young artists that had been selected by
Dr Pamura Umetessi and purchased by us. At their own request, the artists
would remain anonymous. All the supplementary explanatory apparatus of
the exhibition, such as the legends placed next to the exhibits, was created
from random cuttings (fragments of completely different texts being reassembled
into a new, "nonsensical" whole) and had no connection whatever
with the works on display in the exhibition (something which the majority
of visitors did not even notice!).

Alongside
the exhibition we organised conventional guided tours, engaging a group
of young art historians to carry out this task. Following instructions
from the director of the P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Museum, each of them
was to prepare his or her own story, version or interpretation of the
works. The guides were also to incorporate into their narrative the field
they had best mastered, applying this knowledge to the exhibited works.
In this way, the narration (and interpretation) became completely open,
the various stories carrying equal weight in spite of using utterly different
references; the "authenticity" of the statements made was assured
by the framework of the museum institution.In conjunction with the exhibition,
a museum shop selling selected products and graphic prints was opened.
Simultaneously, the P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Product Corporation was founded.
In the future it will cover the financial aspects of the P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E.
Museum's operations.

Communication
Networks

The establishment
of parallel communication networks is an important activity of the P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E.
Museum. Because the Museum does not have its own staff, it occasionally
hires, on a temporary basis, collaborators, professionals and experts
who, for a specific period of time, acquire the status of museum workers
and associates.Kings of the Street (1995-97) was an art project that brought
together a number of professionals (a photographer, an architect, a social
worker), the P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Museum and marginalised individuals
from the city centre - i.e. the homeless.As Pamura Umetessi wrote in the
catalogue accompanying the project, Kings of the Street offered a new
model for establishing connections and communication as a basic armoury.
The project was therefore neither a social commentary nor an artistic
event carrying a symbolic message, but a complex undertaking directed
towards motivating and enabling urban minorities, using a combination
of media and tactics(4). The project culminated
in a one-day street campaign. This began with the official signing of
a contract of mutual cooperation and also determined the financial arrangements
of the agreement. By giving their signature, the homeless committed themselves
to actively participating in the campaign, and for this they received
a symbolic payment. Armchairs were placed on podiums (thus elevating the
participants in relation to the passers-by) around the city centre. The
homeless individuals sat in these armchairs and entered into conversation
with the townsfolk - no longer as anonymous individuals, but as representatives
of a marginal social group and co-authors of the project.Kings of the
Street is the first of a trilogy of projects which lay emphasis on collaborating
with marginal groups that develop unique, parallel forms of economics
for their survival.The P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Archives and P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E.
Security projects (1998) also entailed direct communication and cooperation
with the public (visitors to galleries and museums).

In view
of the inadequate records and supervision of visitors to public institutions,
the P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Museum devised a method for exerting greater control.
This took the form of museum staff collecting visitors' fingerprints.
In return for a fingerprint (an original visual record) visitors received
a copy of a graphic print from the Museum's collection. The second phase
of the project will see the fingerprints analysed, professionally systematised
and in this form put on public display as an open, public archive on the
Internet(5). This undertaking by the P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E.
Museum directly questions the issue of identity, the concept of individuality,
and relations between the law, power and control.